


Setbacks

by feelinglikecleo



Category: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Continuation Of That Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Meeting the Parents, Post-Book 2: Crooked Kingdom, Relationship Negotiation, They're getting there, Touch-Starved, Trauma, baby steps, slowly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29043039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feelinglikecleo/pseuds/feelinglikecleo
Summary: high overhead a gull was diving for some unsuspecting tourist’s pretzel but kaz was too distracted by the swing of inej’s hair to notice. he straightened his tie and, with a smile pulling at his mouth, followed her down the quay.
Relationships: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Comments: 4
Kudos: 47





	Setbacks

high overhead a gull was diving for some unsuspecting tourist’s pretzel but kaz was too distracted by the swing of inej’s hair to notice. he straightened his tie and, with a smile pulling at his mouth, followed her down the quay. 

she was flying. while her feet barely touched the boardwalk, kaz struck a more measured pace, matched by the even cadence of his cane. he looked down at his cane, his bad leg, the scars over his knuckles and frowned. she had asked him to meet them, she wanted him to meet them. he repeated the thought over again. she wanted them to meet him. even clad in most of his armour. she was not ashamed so neither should he be. 

still, the waters lapped at his feet.

up ahead inej’s voice pitched forward in a flurry of suli spoken into the crook of her mothers neck. kaz understood only snatches at a time but the joy on her face, on that of her parents’ was plain as day. it was a balm after days of distance he hadn’t known how to close. 

his gaze flicked to the ship. the answer to the question, how to keep inej? don’t hold her too tightly.

it had been obvious, really. he’d known all along. that didn’t mean it’d be easy to watch her sail across the horizon. he would, watch her go, that is. the memory of her palm, warm and dry and gloriously alive against his, the sign of a deal struck.

“mama, papa, i want you to meet someone.” inej turned and held out her hand to him. the sun was no match for the brightness in her eyes when kaz curled his fingers around hers and stood by her side. “this is kaz.”

“mr. brekker?” her father’s brows were dark and full, the furrow between them a perfect match to the one between inej’s. kaz nodded dumbly, his words lost somewhere in the feel of a bare hand in his. “i think it is you we should thank, no? for bringing us here.”

kaz looked down at his twined fingers and reeled himself back in. “no thanks necessary. your daughter saved my life. more than once, i might add. i’m still settling the debt.” he could feel inej building up to correct him but rather than wait for her to do so he gestured to the city behind them and continued, “since this is your first visit to kerch let me be the one to tell you, welcome to ketterdam—the city of dreams.” and nightmares, he didn’t add. kaz felt certain inej wouldn’t approve of that.

“there’s so much i want to show you,” inej breathed, her smile almost splitting her face.

kaz wondered about that. although he knew (hoped?) she wasn’t ashamed of her life in his city, the battles she had fought and won on the streets and rooftops of the barrel, those weren’t the kinds of things his suli saint would share with her parents. 

of course, he had other things to do. between taking over from haskell, setting up his new shop on the lid, and taking full advantage of rollins’ absence, he’d be neck-deep in paperwork and barrel messes for the foreseeable but he spent hours with the ghafa’s just to find out which version of ketterdam inej would let her parents see.

it was a revelation. that inej possessed the ability to walk through ketterdam as if she had no idea of the putrid, degenerate understory that pulsed behind every decadent facade still surprised him. it shouldn’t, not any more, but it did.

it was a terrible deja vu. kaz knew she saw it too. the wide, doe-eyed look of her parents as they took in the canals, the teetering, multi-storey houses rendered in cheerful pastels, the hawkers promising them their wildest fantasies. he tried to unsee it, to see them only as themselves but he, dirtyhands, had seen them now. there was no undoing it. there was no use in undoing it. if he had seen it, so had others.

for the entirety of their walk around the lid, kaz watched inej struggle with how to shatter the illusion without breaking their hearts in the process. between pointing out the landmarks, the sights and smells of ketterdam, she slipped in warnings and precautions, which streets to avoid and when, signs of trouble or crooked business. when they asked her how she knew all this, she joked, “too much time in the wrong company.”

when they sat down for waffles, inej ran out of evasions. the server disappeared behind the counter and all around them the early afternoon thrummed. seizing the privacy of background noise, her mother took her hand, took a breath, and let loose. tears filled the older woman’s eyes, spilled over her lashes, and landed on the ringed tabletop. inej’s father wrapped an arm around his wife’s shoulders and placed his hand atop theirs, love and guilt all too apparent in his dark eyes.

kaz didn’t need to speak suli to know what was happening and he felt himself recoil. he shouldn’t be here. he had no right to witness this. he didn’t want to be witnessing this. inej had offered him her vulnerability time and again, moments he held closer than his most cherished grudges but this was another thing entirely. inej was crying. hot tears rolling down her cheeks. kaz couldn’t breath around the anguish in her voice as she spoke the few words he could understand, “mati en sheva yelu.”

what could she possibly be apologising for?

the ache it caused in his chest almost pinned him to the chair but he pushed against it and rose. if he stayed here he might vomit or throw something and that’s just the opposite of what inej needed. 

kaz grit his teeth, knuckles white, the crows head of his cane digging painfully into his palm. his rage was a wounded, flailing animal. there was no one to direct it at, no scheme to hatch, or revenge to plot. the peacock would get what was coming to her, as would the slavers and barrel bosses on inej’s growing list. so here, now, kaz was useless, just a boy in a good suit and scars.

he needed to get out of there.

the bell above the door jingled obnoxiously as he pushed his way onto the street. his hand, gloved once more, was wrapped in some poor skivs collar before he had a chance to think. the lad had made the mistake of stepping on the toe of kaz’s polished shoe at a moment of blinding self-loathing. lips peeled back from his teeth, kaz snarled, “learn to use your eyes or i’ll put them in a jar.” the boy whimpered. “do. you. understand?”

“yeah, yes, of course, i’m sorry, please don’t hurt me. i didn’t mean—”

kaz all but threw him to the ground. the fear in the boys eyes was familiar, it slid in to replace the pain kaz had seen in inej’s. this was kaz brekker, dirtyhands, the bastard of the barrel. not above meaningless acts of cruelty. the boy inej was in the process of apologising to her parents for associating with. kaz shrugged on the feeling like a favoured coat—well worn if a little snug in the shoulders—and headed in the direction of home.

/

his room in the slat was all shadows and sleep seemed far away.

kaz had worked late into the night, hunched over stacks of bills and contracts and intelligence until his back had raised a complaint. that new place on the lid would need work if it was going to bring in the kind of marks he intended for it. perhaps, he thought, it might even form a branch of his operation with inej.

inej.

the shadows seemed to mock him, altogether too empty of her silent presence. what was he thinking? he didn’t want her here, in his room. kaz groaned into the darkness. the old lie, that it’d be better when she was away at sea, tasted bitter on his tongue.

abruptly, kaz sat up. if sleep was off the table there were other things he could be doing with his time. he’d never been a very committed sleeper anyhow. ten minutes later kaz was pulling on his boots and heading out the door.

the night was unusually cold and kaz hiked his collar against the wind that ruffled his hair, tugged at his breath. he smiled. bad weather’s good for business. nothing pulls punters into the club like a bite of wind.

pim and keeg straightened as he approached. “what business?”

“wouldn’t you like to know. have either of you seen milo?”

“he’s inside, watching the floor,” pim gestured with a thumb.

“and who’s watching him?”

“anika. she’s been breathing down his neck all week,” keeg snorted. “won’t let him out of her sight since—”

kaz knew the crew talked about his coup, about the way their fellow dregs had come at him with knives and bats and cudgels, the things he’d said to them but they never did so in his presence. he didn’t socialise. he didn’t joke. kaz kept money in the coffers and kept their enemies at bay. he’d made it very clear, he wasn’t their friend.

“good. now, eyes front and centre. i don’t want to see anyone just walking past here—not in this weather. no ones choosing this over the home comforts of the club, understand?”

they both snickered but nodded. “got it, boss.”

the moon’s face was a pale smudge against the dome of the sky, offering only the illusion of illumination between the flickering gas lamps of the city. it was in this metropolitan semi-darkness that he felt her approach. 

a shadow separated from the rest and inej stood before him.

kaz’s breath caught when she pushed her hood back. she looked up at him with limpid eyes, wide and expecting. his mouth opened, “following me, wraith?” inej sighed and cocked her head. why was he like this?

he didn’t know how else to be. kaz had thought long and hard about what he was without his armour and the answer was, afraid. he’d become a barrel boss, fear was a luxury he couldn’t afford. 

“what do you want from me?”

inej stepped closer, into his space, and his breath caught, again. “you know what i want, kaz. the question is, what do you want?”

“i’m a simple man, inej.” the words felt strange and foreign. he knew it was because they were a lie, few were quite so complicated as he. “i want—”

“why did you leave today?”

he looked away.

“why buy me that ship? my indenture? why bring my parents here? if—if you cannot even tell me when you’re feeling overwhelmed. kaz, look at me.” he could refuse everyone but her. “i’m not upset that you left.”

“you’re not?” he couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice.

“no.” the word was wrapped up in a rush of breath that sounded almost like a huff, almost like a laugh. kaz titled his head and frowned down at her. “of course not. kaz.”

“yes?”

“i do not begrudge you your weaknesses,” she said. he couldn’t stop his eyes from falling closed. how does she do this? cut him to the quick. “i will have you without armour, or not at all.”

“i’m trying,” he rasped.

inej nodded, she knew that.

he flinched when he felt her small hands slide up his chest. she stopped moving immediately and he opened his eyes. “go on.” 

inej’s smile reminded him of warmed treacle and like any good misdirect, it distracted him from her hands smoothing over his shoulders, from her body pressed flush against his.

“is this okay?” she asked, eyes dark and earnest.

he hardly knew but he nodded anyway.

his heart took up a ragged beat, the waters lapping at his ankles, up to his shins.

she was so close. she was impossibly far.

kaz made plans, schemed and strategised, that was his nature. every penny of his haul from the van eck job was assigned and accounted for but this, inej in his arms, had been the measure of his desires for longer than he dared acknowledge and now that she was here he didn’t know what to do with her.

she was so small, lithe and perfect, against him. he let the hand not resting on his cane come up to rest between her shoulder blades, pressing into the fabric of her cloak. the moon limned her hair, her eyes, the inky fan of her lashes in silver. dark and deep and watery.

the waves rose. his breath stalled in his lungs. he almost pulled back but then—

“they liked you.”

she caught him. the sound of her voice was a tether to this moment, to the whisper of her breath against his neck, the heat of her body through the layers of their clothing.

“they also thought you were a little strange, too pale and solemn.”

“we can’t all be blessed with your sunny disposition.” the words spilled from his lips like kvas from the bottle. kaz clenched his fist, his jaw. “inej.”

“kaz.”

“did you tell them about the menagerie?” he watched her with a lock-picks attention, one eye on the door and the other on the haul. it was maybe too much, too soon. she had become his tether but he hadn’t yet figured out how to become hers.

the fabric of her cloak shifted against him as she let out a breath. “yes.”

how did you find the courage? he wanted to ask.

“why?” is what came out.

the slightest tremor rocked her before she pressed the fingers of her right hand into the rough wool of his collar, a solid pressure against his neck. her eyes closed. she was holding him to steel herself. 

oh, how he ached. 

“because they asked and because i needed to tell them.”

the fingers of the hand she hadn’t wrapped around his neck caught the lapel of his coat as if to hold him closer. i’m not going anywhere, he wanted to say. 

with her attention focused on his chest, she tilted her head. the sight of her pulse, fluttering in the hollow of her throat, pushed a wave of longing through him so powerful it almost sent him to his knees. the memory of his mouth on her neck was fresh like morning dew. 

as was what happened afterwards.

kaz’s mouth worked around things he wanted, no, needed to say. “inej.” she looked up at him and in the generous well of her gaze he found just enough courage to say, “you must teach me the secret to your bravery because there is so much i want to tell you, so much i want to do with you but i am afraid. afraid that i am not, that i cannot be, enough for you. afraid that you will become just one more thing i had and lost, one more thing i was never meant to keep.”

the look she gave him then, made kaz feel richer than a king. here she was, the only treasure he never had to steal, smiling at him like he’d gifted her the moon. 

inej tapped a slender index finger against her pursed lips and said, “you’re a notoriously poor student.” he thought his heart might beat out of his chest. “but, you show promise. perhaps, kaz brekker, we can teach each other.”

**Author's Note:**

> this was originally posted on my tumblr (feelinglikecleopatra). if you liked it, come say hi!


End file.
